In Dialogue: 2016 Book Club

Join us this season for Profile’s In Dialogue Book Club!

Over the course of the season we will explore the worlds of our main stage productions by reading a variety of different works, then gathering together and engaging in lively discussion over light refreshments. If you would like to join us, please RSVP to carmen@weinribs.net

August 9th, 2016
6-7:30pm
In the lobby at Artists Rep 1515 SW Morrison

Following a desperate night-long battle, a group of beleaguered soldiers in an isolated base in Kandahar are faced with a lone woman demanding the return of her brother’s body. Is she a spy, a black widow, a lunatic? Or is she what she claims to be: a grieving young sister intent on burying her brother according to local rites? Single-minded in her mission, she refuses to move from her spot on the field in full view of every soldier in the stark outpost. Her presence quickly proves dangerous as the camp’s tense, claustrophobic atmosphere comes to a boil when the men begin arguing about what to do next.

Told from various points of view, including those of the U.S. soldiers, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s heartbreaking and haunting novel takes a timeless tragedy and hurls it into present-day Afghanistan. Taking its cues from the Antigone myth, Roy-Bhattacharya recreates the chaos, intensity, and immediacy of battle, and conveys the inevitable repercussions felt by the soldiers, and their families, and especially one sister. The result is the most powerful expression to date of the nature and futility of war.

We are thrilled to welcome Professor Pancho Savery as the moderator for our August book club. Pancho Savery is Professor of English, Humanities, and American Studies at Reed College, where he teaches courses on modern and contemporary drama ( both American and European), African American literature, nineteenth and twentieth century American literature, and Reed’s required freshman course on the Ancient Mediterranean (Greece, Rome, Persia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt). He has given talks at all the major Portland theatres and is associated with The August Wilson Red Door Project. His poems have appeared in the Oregonian, Hubbub, and elsewhere.